A low-bit-rate audio codec using mel-scaled linear predictive analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a low-bit-rate audio codec using a new analysis method named mel-scaled linear predictive analysis (mel-LP analysis). In mel-LP analysis, a spectral envelope is estimated on a mel- or bark-frequency scale, so as to improve the spectral resolution in the low-frequency band. This analysis is accomplished with about a twofold increase in computation over standard LPC analysis. Our codec using mel-LP analysis consists of five key parts: time frequency transformation, flattening of MDCT coefficients using the mel-LP spectral envelope, power normalization, perceptual weighting estimation, and multistage VQ. In subjective experiments, we investigated the performance of our codec using the mel-LP analysis method, through 7-level paired comparison tests. The result shows that the codec using the mel-LP analysis method results in a good performance at a low bit rate, particularly at 16 kbps. In the cases of pop songs, piano music and male speech, sound quality was improved.